Knicks coach Mike Brown said recently that he believes that OG Anunoby deserves to be named to the First Team All-Defense this season, but there are still hurdles for the 6’8″ wing to clear before he’s even in consideration, Kristian Winfield writes for the New York Daily News.
Because the 65-game rule stipulates a 20-minute minimum, Anunoby finds himself one game away from the qualifying mark with four games to go.
Anunoby missed All-Defense last season despite playing a career-high 74 games, but the Knicks have a vastly improved defense, ranking eighth in the league in defensive rating compared to 13th last season.
“[OG’s] versatility is off the charts, and you can do a lot of things with your defense because of him,” Brown said. “And he deserves First Team All-Defense this year, and hopefully the powers that be will see it that way, too. Sorry about that to all the kids out there, but it is [bulls–t].”
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- Miles McBride is trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible following a 28-game absence due to a sports hernia surgery. The road back from his first major injury has been a tough one, writes Jared Schwartz of the New York Post. “Everything, honestly,” McBride said when asked what the hardest part of his return has been. “It’s a tough thing to be out so long, having a surgery in the middle of the season… It’s like someone stabbing your groin, hip and ab at the same time. It’s not fun. But I’ll get back right.”
- Monday marks a month since New York has beaten a team with a record over .500, Schwartz writes. With the playoffs fast approaching, the Knicks need to buck this trend and find ways to carve out wins against good teams. They face the Hawks, Celtics, Raptors, and Hornets, which gives them a good test as they head into the postseason. “Obviously this is a good little stretch to end the season to make sure we’re as sharp as we can be going into the playoffs,” Josh Hart said. “The past is the past, nothing you can do about it now. Our focus is on tomorrow being 1-0 against playoff teams, and then we move on to the next one.”
- Jeremy Sochan got his biggest workload since coming to the Knicks on Friday against the Bulls, Schwartz writes in a piece on the Knicks’ playoff rotation taking shape. “Jeremy hadn’t played in a while, especially when it comes to playing with the first or second unit,” Brown said. “We threw him out there and he was fantastic. He was fantastic defensively, it’s why he was the defensive player of the game, but he also was really good offensively. We just looked fast.” Brown liked what he saw, and specifically, he liked what he saw from Sochan out of the center position. “I wanted to play him at some backup five, that’s basically what he played for us tonight,” he said. “It allowed us to do a lot of things, like switch pick-and-rolls and stuff like that. It brought a different element to our game. Not just offensively with the speed, but even defensively with the flexibility of switching a lot of things, just keeping the ball in front of us.”